After nearly four years of economic stagnation, massive unemployment, record-setting debt and government intrusions into the economy that have paralyzed the private sector, the United States needs a new direction. For this reason, The Dispatch urges voters to choose Republican Mitt Romney for president in the Nov. 6 election.
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Four years after promising hope and change, and after a deficit-driving $787 billion stimulus program, here is the result:

• 12.1 million unemployed, with an unemployment rate above 8 percent for 43 of the past 44 months.

• 8.6 million working part time because they can’t find full-time work

• 2.5 million who wanted to work, but have stopped looking for jobs.

• In 2009, real median household income was $52,195. By 2011, it had fallen to $50,054

• In 2009, the U.S. poverty rate was 14.3 percent. By 2011, the poverty rate climbed to 15 percent.

• On Obama’s watch, 12 million more Americans joined the food-stamp program, which has reached a record of more than 46 million enrollees.

• Annual federal budget deficits above $1 trillion for the past four years, increasing the national debt to an all-time high of $16 trillion.
…Obama has failed. That is why Mitt Romney is the preferred choice for president. Romney’s adult life has been spent turning around troubled private and public institutions. These turnarounds include scores of companies acquired and restructured by Bain Capital, the investment firm he founded in 1984. Not all were successes, but that is because to a significant degree, many of the companies Bain took on were high-risk. In 1999, he was asked to take over the scandal-plagued and fiscally mismanaged 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. He quickly streamlined its management, fixed its finances and guaranteed its security, turning it into a success. As governor of Massachusetts, he made tough decisions to lead the state out of a budget deficit, and he did so in a state dominated by Democrats.

As a career businessman and former governor, Romney brings a wealth of executive experience in the private sector and the public sector that dwarfs that of Obama. From working both sides of the government/private-sector equation, he understands how that relationship can aid or impede prosperity. His election would be an immediate signal to the private sector that someone who knows what he is doing is managing the nation’s economic policy. The effect on business confidence would be dramatic and immediate, and business confidence is the vital ingredient needed to spur investment and hiring, the two things that the United States so desperately needs.

In 2008, Americans made a leap of faith when they elevated the inexperienced Obama to the White House. That faith was not rewarded. This time, voters should place their hopes for change in experience, by electing Romney.

Two days after his lackluster first debate performance, President Barack Obama’s re-election hopes got a timely boost. The government’s monthly jobless report for September showed the nation’s unemployment rate fell below 8 percent for the first time since he took office.

If that were the only metric that mattered, the president might credibly argue that the U.S. economy was finally on the right track. Unfortunately for him, and for the American people, he can’t.
…We have little confidence that Obama would be more successful managing the economy and the budget in the next four years. For that reason, though we endorsed him in 2008, we are recommending Romney in this race.
…Now the president and his supporters are attacking Romney because his long-term budget blueprint calls for money-saving reforms to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, three of the biggest drivers of deficit spending. Obama would be more credible in critiquing the proposal if he had a serious alternative for bringing entitlement spending under control. He doesn’t.
…[T]he core of Romney’s campaign platform, his five-point plan, at least shows he understands that reviving the economy and repairing the government’s balance sheet are imperative — now, not four years in the future.

Romney has a strong record of leadership to run on. He built a successful business. He rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from scandal and mismanagement. As governor of Massachusetts, he worked with a Democrat-dominated legislature to close a $3billion budget deficit without borrowing or raising taxes….
…But after reflecting on his [Obama's] four years in the White House, we also don’t think that he’s the best qualified candidate in this race.

MIAMI– Mitt Romney has picked up another important Florida endorsement as he continues to build his network in the crucial primary state ahead of his probable run for president. U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV has said that he will support the former Massachusetts governor because of his economic credentials.

“We need true leadership in the White House with someone who is uniquely qualified to grow the economy and create the quality jobs that Americans deserve and need,” Mack told the St. Petersburg Times.
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“If Governor Romney decides to run for president in 2012, I will absolutely be supporting him and helping him in Florida,” Thrasher told FOX in March.” He would be a great GOP nominee.”

Romney sights are firmly focused on Florida, a state at the center of his political strategy to win the GOP nomination, according to Florida insiders who are backing him and his expected entry into the 2012 race.

A precursor to Romney’s Florida stops and Tax Day was an op-ed penned by Romney in the Orlando Sentinel yesterday. For Americans, who are busy crunching numbers this weekend to pay voracious Uncle Sam, Romney echoes many feelings regarding America’s complex, convoluted tax system. He writes that “our system of taxation is killing our nation’s once-strong economic engine.” (A special exception gives taxpayers until Monday the 18th to make the IRS happy.)

“The mind-boggling complexity of our tax system is only part of the problem,” he wrote. “As of last year, the U.S. tax code had mushroomed into 71,684 pages that no one human being can fully understand. Along with complexity comes a dizzying array of perverse incentives.”

Romney also writes about our national debt, states that one of the biggest tax reforms is reining in Obama, and lauds the Tea Party movement:

Almost 21/2 centuries after the original Boston Tea Party of 1773, the idea of limited government that inspired our forebears is very much alive. The growth of government is not some inexorable force. In a democracy, we the people decide. Thanks to the Tea Party, there’s real hope that we can rein in our profligate federal government.